GOLDFARB’S SAFE HOUSE WAS in a scruffy neighborhood on the western fringe of downtown. Second floor over a storefront, good sight lines both ways, dead bolt in the back. But who was planning to attack? Otto had become a ghost again, no trace left in Villa Freud but a broken chain lock where thieves must have tried to get in. After Goldfarb’s doctor had put a few stitches in his forehead, he had fallen asleep, exhausted, a patient with a bandage. Aaron stared at the face, everything familiar, just like the pictures, except now the skin was thin and dry, the cheekbones close to the surface. Receding hair gray, some white. The face old and childlike at the same time, the way people look when they sleep. He had wet himself earlier and no one had bothered to change his pants, the wet blotch drying but visible.
“Still out?” Nathan said.
Aaron nodded.
“I brought his clothes.”
“You went back?”
“We had to see if he left anything. That could ID him. But just this.” He lifted a small case. “The good doctor travels light.”
“Plane ticket?”
Nathan shook his head. “Just a wad of cash.”
Aaron thought of her at the teller’s window in Calle Florida. Regular withdrawals, nothing to call attention.
“You took a chance going there.”
“Not to Ortiz’s. Nothing happened there. That anyone saw.”
“And down the street?”
“I had a coffee. On Bulnes. Crime is getting worse. In broad daylight now. Probably drugs. Two got away, one with a camera. That would be Fritz.” He looked over. “We’re OK. Nobody’s looking for Otto.”
“Yet.”
“Funny how the body shuts down, isn’t it? You’d think he’d be jumping around, all excited, but he’s out. You OK for another shift? I want to check on Ari. We can’t take him to a hospital with a bullet—”
“Fine.” He looked up. “What about the visa? She didn’t give it to him?”
Nathan patted his jacket pocket. “Here,” he said. “No passport, though. I figure that comes last minute with the ticket. Whoever’s helping gets it for him so he doesn’t have to show, until the plane.”
“Careful.”
“Seventeen, eighteen years he’s careful. And he’s still here. Even when he’s not, officially. But now—” He looked at the couch. “Now his luck’s run out.” He turned back to Aaron. “There’s coffee over there if you need some. Don’t take any chances—you want to be wide awake with him. I’ll bring some food when I come back. You’re sure you’re OK? You’re not used to this.”
“I’m learning on the job.”
“Huh.”
A sound came from the couch. Nathan turned. “Good morning. Evening.” He dipped his head in a mock bow.
“Who are you?” The voice full, not vague and scratchy, trying to regain some authority.
“Your worst nightmare,” Nathan said.
“Israeli?”
Nathan said nothing.
“What do you want with me?”
“I’ll let you wonder about that. It’ll help while away the time.”
“You think I’m Eichmann. I’m not Eichmann.”
“No, you’re Otto Schramm.”
Otto reached up to feel the bandage on his forehead, an awkward move in handcuffs.
“You’re all right,” Nathan answered before Otto could ask. “Stitches come out, you’ll be like new.”
“Do I have to wear these?” Otto said, holding out his hands. “Is this necessary?”
“You’re a desperate character.”
“Desperate,” he said. “And how do I go to the bathroom?”
“You’ll figure something out. Otherwise, one of us will have to hold your dick for you.”
Otto gave him a look of scorn, something not worth answering.
“Want some clean pants?”
“You’re going to kill me.”
“Not us. So you might as well have the clean pants while you’re waiting. Aaron, give me a hand, will you?”
Otto held up his arms, a reflex, then dropped them, resigned, as they unbuckled the belt and pulled off his pants.
“Why not just do it? Not go through this—charade. One Eichmann isn’t enough for you? You’re going to kill us anyway.”
“That’s not up to me. But just so we’re clear about this? I wouldn’t mind killing you, and if you try anything, we will. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And you’re not holding any cards. We have men in the street out front, covering. More in the back.” His voice steady, not looking at Aaron. “You leave this room without us, they have orders to shoot. No questions. In the room you’ve got a trained officer.” He nodded to Aaron. “Unfortunately a little trigger happy. He’s been reprimanded. So don’t make him nervous. Any quick moves, you’ll be dead—you understand?”
“Fantastisch,” Otto said, his mouth twisted in contempt. “The great Mossad.”
“You just keep working on how to take a piss.”
The new pants were on now.
“Where is the bathroom?”
“Over there. Aaron, show him.”
Otto got up slowly, a little stiff, then looked at Aaron. “I can do it.”
“Not alone,” Nathan said.
Otto shuffled across the room, Aaron following, looking down at the thinning hair. He had always imagined Otto tall, towering over his selection line in polished black boots, but he was shorter than Aaron, surprisingly slight, about Max’s height.
Nathan waited until Otto finished.
“I knew you could do it,” he said, a tight smile. “Get some rest. Don’t make Aaron nervous. I’ll send Fritz with some food,” he said to Aaron, then turned back to Otto. “You’ll recognize him. He’s the guy your buddy tried to kick to death in Hamburg.”
“In Hamburg,” Otto said, thrown by this, the net wider than he’d imagined. How long had they been stalking him?
“So don’t make him nervous either.”
“Go to hell,” Otto said, but his voice had lost its force, deflated, and he sank into the couch. “How long am I here?”
“Not long. So try to make the best of it. You want to start by telling us the flight number?”
Otto looked up. “Flight number.” Marking time, waiting.
“To São Paulo.”
His eyes widened slightly, thrown again, not expecting this. Hamburg. São Paulo.
“Go to hell.”
“Well, maybe it’ll come back to you.” Nathan checked his watch, then nodded to the telephone on the side table. “It works. Call if you need anything. Fritz should be here in an hour. Herr Schramm,” he said, tipping his head. He glanced around. “Not much of a place, is it? If you hadn’t run, we could still be at Ortiz’s. Much nicer.”
Otto watched him go, not saying anything, then sat looking at his hands, shoulders slumped, his whole body sagging.
“I heard you before,” he said finally. “You’re not Israeli. So who are you representing?”
“Representing,” Aaron said, turning over the word, formal and snide at the same time.
“An American voice. So who sent you?”
“Max Weill.”
Otto’s head snapped up, all attention.
“Max Weill,” he said, disconcerted. “He’s alive?”
“No, he died.”
“So,” he said, as if this had settled something. “When?”
“After he saw you in Hamburg.”
His head went up again. “He saw me?” Confused, thinking of Ohlsdorf.
“When you took your walk by the Binnenalster. A dead man. But he knew it was you. You should have stayed home. If he hadn’t seen you, none of this would be happening.”
Otto made a short waving motion with his hand, weighted down by the cuffs. “Who knows why things happen. So,” he said, brooding, “he’s dead.” He looked up. “And who are you?”
“His nephew.”
“Herschel’s boy?”
Aaron nodded, surprised, forgetting he had known the family.
“His blood. And now you’ve come for your pound of flesh.” A faint, wry smile. “Jews.”
“Not your flesh. I don’t want any part of you.”
“What do you want, then?”
“What Max wanted. Put you on trial.”
“Then you’re wasting your time. Do you think I would ever let that happen? Eichmann was a fool. Talk, talk, and they were going to kill him anyway. Trial. A farce. From me—you get nothing. I’ll never testify.”
“But other people will.”
“And what? I sit there while they point their fingers at me. What do they know about it? Any of them. Max. I saved his life. I pulled him out of the line. And what thanks? Hunting me down, like some vermin. After I saved him.”
Aaron looked over, unable to speak, the mad rationale flowing out of Otto’s mouth like spittle.
“He was a good doctor. You know we were at university together? So I knew. The others? To them, just another one for the ovens. But I knew. So I saved him. He survived the war. What were the chances of that? Unless someone saved him. But he never understood that, how it was.”
“You murdered his son.”
“Murdered. It’s not correct, that word.” He gestured with his hand again, a dismissal. “He was going to die anyway. I made it easier for him. A matter of minutes only, with the gas. Not like some of the others. For them, a difficult time.”
“In the medical experiments.”
“We were asked to do that,” he said, explaining the obvious. “There was never such an opportunity before. For tests.”
“On children.”
“They were sent there to die,” Otto said, not hearing. “And now useful. You can still read them, the reports, the test results. At Dahlem, the Institute. They didn’t die for nothing. They made a contribution.”
Aaron looked at him. Radiation tests. Endless crackpot measurements. All sitting in file drawers somewhere in Berlin. A contribution.
“You made him help. Max. You made him do what you did.”
“I didn’t send those people there. It was not my decision. And so many. Train after train. We had to do the best we could under the circumstances. Medical decisions. Who was fit for work? Who had typhus? You had to watch like a hawk before it spread. And the requests would come. From the Institute, from the Wehrmacht. How long could a pilot survive in freezing water? Useful information for the war.” He paused. “Mengele and the twins—I never took that seriously. He was obsessed, I think. And the guards, I don’t answer for them. Some of them were—sadists.” Searching for the word.
“Sadists,” Aaron said, as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
“Not all. Some. There were terrible things. People thrown into the ovens before they were dead. Terrible. But in our section, only the right procedures. What doctors had to do.” He looked up. “That’s the way it was there. You think it was my idea, to make such a camp? And now who answers for it? The people responsible? No—” He stopped, not bothering to finish, talking too much.
“You haven’t answered yet.”
Otto ignored this, looking down again, brooding.
“Do you want some water?” Aaron said.
Otto shook his head. Another silence.
“How did he die? Max.”
“His heart.”
“So, a long life. I saw him on a magazine once. With Wiesenthal. And that’s how he spent his life? Looking for camp guards? To accuse them—of what? Doing what they had to do?”
“No, bringing them to justice.”
“Quatsch. There was no such thing. Not at Auschwitz. What would justice be there? He was a sentimentalist, Max, always. That made it difficult for him—to do the work. A doctor, you can’t be a sentimentalist. Death is part of the job. It’s all around you. Those people were corpses. But useful. That’s what mattered.”
“Living corpses.”
Otto shrugged, a point not worth arguing.
“Corpses. Like bodies in anatomy class. So you learn from them. You did your work.”
“What did you learn?”
Otto looked away, ignoring this, scanning the room, then came back to Aaron.
“Such a waste, looking for guards. All these years. A good doctor. He gave it up?”
Aaron nodded. “He didn’t feel he was a doctor anymore. After that.”
Otto shrugged. “Foolishness.”
“You stopped too.”
“I had a new identity. A German doctor? How long would that have taken them?”
“Who’s them?”
“At first the Allies. The Amis,” he said, nodding to Aaron. “So eager for justice. But those days? In Europe? Everything a mess. It was easy to get away—get a new name.”
“And Red Cross papers. And a priest to help.”
“So you know all that.”
“The ratline to Argentina.”
Otto looked up, amused. “They call it that? I didn’t know. We’re the rats?” A kind of warmth in his voice, suddenly like hers, what he must have sounded like at parties, an easy charm. “So, Argentina. A new name. And it was good here, for years. Nobody was looking. The Amis went home, Adenauer was busy. No one cared about some businessman in Buenos Aires. But then the Israelis came and things changed.”
“They came for Eichmann.”
“Then why not me?”
“So you killed off Helmut Braun.”
“Nobody looks for a dead man. Not even the Israelis.”
“Max thought you were dead too. Until he saw you. Your one mistake.”
“Not the only,” he said, his voice weary, then smiled at Aaron, the smile a kind of lure. “But imagine, it’s Max who finds me at the end, not the Israelis. Not that it matters. Now they have me anyway. So now what? Jerusalem? Another glass box? Maybe the same one, it would save expense. Did they keep it? Waiting for Mengele, if they find him. Are you going after him next?”
“No. Only you.”
“Ah. Something for Max. You’re the faithful dog? Here’s the scent. Bring him back? So you can take me to Jerusalem?” he said, his voice rising, lifting his hands to show the handcuffs. “That’s his revenge?”
“Not Jerusalem. Germany.”
Otto stared. “Germany,” he said, disturbed, taken by surprise. “A trial in Germany? No, I won’t do that.”
“It’s not an invitation. There’s a warrant out for you.”
“A trial in Germany? To be a spectacle there? No,” he said, visibly upset. He looked up. “What makes you think they want a trial? It was enough, after the war. Now it’s—it’s another time. People want to forget.”
“They used to,” Aaron said, nodding. “But now there’s a prosecutor in Frankfurt who doesn’t. He thinks it’s time to take a look. New trials. What Max knew would happen. Why he kept collecting evidence, even when no one wanted to see it. Not just guards, the bosses too. Doctors. You’ll be a star attraction.”
Otto made a growling noise, not a word, just a sound. “To Germany,” he said to himself, and when Aaron nodded, “Then why do they want to know the flight number to São Paulo?” A question he’d been waiting to ask, eyes on Aaron, watching his face. Think.
“To see how long it’ll be before anyone misses you,” Aaron said easily, the answer just coming out, as if he’d been cued. “Whether that would affect the plans.”
“The plans. And what are the plans? Another plane? They’re going to drug me?”
Aaron said nothing.
“How did they know about São Paulo?” he said, not letting go.
“That would be telling.”
“In other words, you don’t know,” he said, his voice sly now.
Aaron shrugged, not biting. “I’m just the babysitter.”
“No,” Otto said. “Max’s hound. You said. How did you find me?”
“I tracked you from Hamburg. After Max saw you.” He paused. “Why did you go? Take that risk?”
Otto looked away. “Personal reasons. A family matter.”
“Your wife’s funeral.”
“You’re so well informed, why do you ask?”
“But why? You hadn’t seen her in years. She’d never know if you were there.”
“It’s an obligation. Family. That’s something you should understand. Why do you do this? For Max.”
“No, for me. I don’t think you should get away with it.”
“Oh, the hand of justice again. And who appointed you?” He looked down. “She was my wife. I thought I owed her that much respect. To be there.”
“After all this time. Did she know? About the camps? What you were doing?”
Otto looked away, quiet for a minute. “She was—sensitive. The bombs terrified her. That was it, I think, what made her sick.” He took a breath, moving on. “So, yes, there was some feeling there and I had to go. And then, at Ohlsdorf, some idiot with a camera—the other one, that was you?”
Aaron nodded.
“So you followed. But here, how did you find me here? A dead man.”
Aaron looked over. Think of something plausible, away from her. “It wasn’t hard. Once I saw that Bildener had identified the body. I recognized him from Max’s files. At the Institute. So I knew he’d lead me to you. And he did.”
“Markus,” Otto said, frowning. “He should be more careful. More like Trude. A sphinx, that one. It’s his temper. He just says things. He was always like that.” He stopped, looking up. “And from him to my daughter?”
Aaron, caught, made a half nod. They looked at each other, not sure where to take this.
“She’s not—” Otto said. “She knows nothing.”
“She knows you’re alive.”
“She had no part in that. Any of it.”
“She helps you.”
“She’s my daughter. My family.”
“Another obligation?”
Otto shook his head. “She didn’t want me to go. To Germany. She disapproves of me.”
“But she got you the visa for Brazil.”
Otto glanced at him, uncertain how much Aaron knew. “So I can go there. Disappear from her life. Really be dead this time. That’s what she wants, for me to die.” His voice growing faint. “And now a trial,” he said, thinking out loud. “What this will do to her.”
“I can’t help that,” Aaron said, answering something else.
Otto looked up. “You? No, you’re the hound. You find the game. With your good nose. Then the others shoot.” Another silence, the air in the room suddenly thick. “So why do you do it?” Otto said. “You never said before. What purpose does it serve? To make an example? For whom? The other Nazis? When you sniff them out? To see me hang? There’s some satisfaction for you in that?”
Aaron shook his head. “You’re just the excuse. To talk about it. So people remember.”
“But they won’t. You can’t bring them back, you know. Max’s son, any of them. Not even with a trial. That scale that’s supposed to go like this?” He motioned with his hands, balancing. “When justice is served? It doesn’t work.” He raised one side higher than the other. “The victims are gone. In the air. No weight.”
Aaron stared at him, not saying anything. What Max knew too. But kept going anyway. As if it matters, he said. We have to act as if it matters. Otherwise—
But Otto was talking again. “So, I’m just an excuse. At least the Israelis really hate me—there’s some dignity in that. Not just be an excuse for this circus. And what do you think the verdict will be? That’s what they’ll remember. The circus, not what happened. Nobody wants to remember that.”
Aaron took a breath. “But they should.”
A wry half smile. “Another Max. A sentimentalist.”
This time it was Jamie who wanted to meet in a park, the southeast corner of Las Heras, near the Diaz entrance. Dog walkers, mothers with strollers, kids in shorts heading for the soccer pitches, everyday Buenos Aires, except for the two men on the bench in the shade, Jamie with his hat still on.
“Now what?” Aaron said.
“Consider yourself back at work.”
“What happened to my leave?”
“It’s usually a week. If you’re still in mourning, do it on your own time.”
“And we had to come here to tell me this?”
“I said back at work, not back at the office.”
“Meaning?”
“They want you to keep doing what you’re doing. In fact, they’re sending help.”
“What I’m doing.”
Jamie looked away, uneasy. “They heard about the tap. They asked me, I told them. I had to. I said I authorized it because I believed you.” He turned to face Aaron. “That Schramm was alive.”
“And?”
“No good deed goes unpunished. Now they believe it too. And they’re all excited.”
“I thought you said they weren’t in the war crimes business,” Aaron said, apprehensive, off balance.
“They’re not.”
Aaron waited. “I’ll bite.”
“They think it’s a unique opportunity.”
“To do what?”
“Recruit him.” Jamie moved his hand, short-stopping him. “I know, not what you had in mind. All the Nuremberg stuff. But they’re not interested in that. What they’re interested in is him.”
“As a unique opportunity.”
“At first they just wanted me to close it down—the tap, you playing detective—and then they saw the beauty of the thing.”
“Tell me.”
“You’ve got a guy officially dead. Who wants to stay that way. That gives terrific leverage to someone who knows he’s not. Expose him and he’s nailed as a war criminal. Work with him and you’ve got someone with a perfect cover—he’s who he says he is because he can’t be someone who’s dead.”
“Jamie, he’s Otto Schramm. We going to recruit Bormann next? You don’t get better cover than that—he’s been dead for years. We think. Mengele? Why not all of them?”
“Because they weren’t close to Perón. Schramm was. Is,” he said calmly, laying down a fan of winning cards.
“OK,” Aaron said, “let’s start over. Tell me how this works again.” Trying to slow things down, his mind racing. Otto under Agency protection, invulnerable.
“Most of the big guys down here, when they get thrown out, they either get a bullet in the head or go live on a beach somewhere. Drink rum and fuck the local talent. What they don’t do is come back. But Perón wants to.”
“Does anybody want him back?”
“Plenty. The fan club never gave up, and the others—well, look who they’ve had since. So Perón looks better and better. Forget the economy almost tanked before they threw him out. Now he’s the good old days.”
“It’s a long time to be away.”
“But he keeps in touch. You have to hand it to him, he knows how to play the game. He’s even got the Church thinking he looks good again. I thought when he left in ’55 he’d be stuck in exile with Stroessner in Paraguay. End of story. But no, he goes to Panama next, then to Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.”
“To the beach.”
“But not drinking. Receiving delegations. Of Argentines. Even Trujillo thought he was a troublemaker. And then, the jackpot, Franco takes him in last year. Spain’s still the mother country to a lot of people down here. It gives him credibility. So now he’s like a fucking government in exile, plotting with this one, that one.”
“And?”
“And we don’t have anybody close to him, who can tell us who’s coming to visit, who he’s talking to. We’re operating in the dark.”
“Assuming he’s worth bothering about in the first place.”
“We have to assume that. Argentina’s important and he’s always hated us. He still thinks Germany should have won. Not to mention, he has a nasty habit of nationalizing companies when things get tough. We don’t want that. We want him to stay in Madrid and enjoy the bullfights. We want to know what he’s up to.”
“Which is where Otto comes in.”
Jamie nodded. “Perón knows him. As Schramm. Then as Braun. And now that Braun’s dead, he’ll know him as somebody else. Pick a name. A loyalist, someone Perón can trust. With messages. With—you name it. Really trust. Because he’ll have this special leverage over him—he knows who he is.”
“The same leverage we have.”
Jamie nodded.
“So Otto’s blackmailed twice.”
“That’s the beauty of it.”
“If you think gossip about a tin-pot dictator is more important than trying a war criminal.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But it’s not the way we’re looking at it, so do yourself a favor and make your peace with it. It saves time in the end.”
“It’s wrong, Jamie. We can’t do this.”
Jamie looked straight at him, the silence speaking for him.
“So we let him get away with it.”
“He did get away with it. They’re dead.”
For a minute neither said anything.
“Twenty years now they’re dead,” Jamie said finally.
“But he’s not.”
“And what good is that to us? Or maybe they send him to Spandau. He can see Hess at breakfast. What good does that do? Five, ten years and he’s sorry and he won’t do it again? We know what he did. We knew in ’45. This is about now. Nineteen sixty-two. What do we do with him now?”
“Make him one of us.”
“We work with a lot of people. They’re not all Eagle Scouts. You know that. This way we get something out of him. What do we get if he’s sitting in Spandau?”
“I didn’t come here to save his ass.”
“But now you’re here. And you’re back at work. This is what we do, remember?”
Aaron looked at him, saying nothing.
“If it makes you feel any better, he’s not exactly getting a free pass. You’re on a leash like this, you’re only as good as your last piece of information. It’s always hanging over your head—what we know. Not a happy life if you’re the worrying type. Kind of house arrest.”
“Don’t,” Aaron said.
Jamie lowered his voice. “You need to get comfortable with this,” he said slowly, serious. “You need to be on board.”
“Because?”
“You’ll be making the approach.”
Aaron felt air rush out of him, as if he’d been punched.
“Me,” he said, almost a whisper.
Jamie nodded. “You won’t have to sell it very hard, but you don’t want to take no for an answer either. So.”
Several voices in his head, everything happening too fast. Throw a switch.
“That’s assuming we find him,” he said.
“I thought you said you were close.”
“Close isn’t there.”
“No. That’s why the reinforcements. They get here tomorrow, the day after. We don’t want to take a chance on losing him, so you have a team now. Another tap if you want it. Martínez? You thought he might—”
Aaron shook his head. “There’s no contact there.”
“How do you know?”
Play it out. “Tap him, then. It can’t hurt. You already have a file on him.”
“As long as your arm.” He paused. “You all right?”
“Just thinking. What if he says no? Won’t do it?”
“What choice does he have?” He looked over. “But you’ll make that clear to him. The options. That there aren’t any.” He leaned back on the bench. “It’s the kind of thing that gets noticed at Langley. After that leave business. I mean, what the fuck was that? People don’t take leave. But now you’ll be flavor of the month. New asset in place, perfect leverage. Give Madrid something to do for a change. Nice.” He looked over. “This could do a lot for you. Even put BA on the map for five minutes. So don’t fuck it up.”
“And if he gets away?”
“He won’t. You’ll make sure.”
“I’m not a field guy.”
“But you’ve got the direct lead. You’ve got her.”
“What do I say to her?”
“You don’t say anything. You just find him.”
“And then he disappears?”
Jamie opened his hands.
“No. She has to know he’s OK.”
“All right. We’ll arrange it. A little good-bye. Of course, we do this, she’ll know. About you. She’s not going to like that.”
“No,” Aaron said, a clench in his stomach. “Any of it.”
“On the other hand, he’ll be safer with us than he is here. Remind her of that. We don’t want any trouble.”
Aaron shook his head. “You don’t know her.”
“Not like you.”